By: Alex Tilton

Some spoilers ahead. 

The setting of a story is usually a tool the writer uses to put the characters in certain situations. You want to tell a survival story? Set it in a war zone. You want to tell a fantasy story? Set it in a mythical kingdom. If you want to tell a story about the reality of human degradation and indifference to everyday suffering, set your story on the streets of any major city.

LBR is set in Philadelphia, amidst the homeless population that turn tricks on the streets to survive. I want to start off by praising the fact that the story was shaped around the rules of reality. It makes it much easier to identify with the characters and it creates immersion. Our lead is played by Amanda Seyfried, as Mikayla Fitzpatrick a PPD patrol officer raising her son alone. She reports to the scene of a dead body, which everyone has written off as a typical street person overdosing on narcotics. ‘Mickey’ (as she’s called) has personal reasons for wanting a more thorough investigation and it is revealed that several street women have been killed recently by being given an overdose of insulin. 

In keeping with our real-world tone, an already overworked police department has little interest in solving the crimes, leaving Mickey to work on it more or less alone. But she’s able to enlist the help of her former patrol partner who empathizes with her situation. She admits to him that the reason she’s so invested in finding out what happened to these street women is that her sister is one of them. She’s been living rough on the streets for years and is missing. 

Ugly realities also dominate her personal life. Mickey has trouble paying for a good school for her son because her loathsome ex refuses to be involved. Mickey is also hunting for her sister, whom she worries has been taken by this killer. This journey involves processing a lot of very believable, gritty, realistic, ugly pain. Poverty, past trauma, bureaucratic red tape, and most of all, indifference obstruct her search at every juncture and only an overwhelming sense of family responsibility keeps her going.

The investigation has a standard whodunnit structure. There are several misleading suspects who turn out not to be involved, some assumptions made by Mickey that turn out to be unfounded and lead her down dead ends. And all of this is done very well. By the time the killer is revealed, we had guessed who it was by simple process of elimination. This could’ve been done better, but it was by no means bad. And all along the way we are treated to superb acting, well crafted atmosphere, and a few genuine surprises. I loved this show… right up until the end.

I almost want to tell you to sit down and watch the entire series just so you can experience this ending the way I did. But for anyone who doesn’t want to bother, here’s what happens:

Over the course of eight hour-long episodes, we get a brutally realistic and grounded story of indifference to suffering, bureaucratic red tape, guilt, complicated family dynamics and human disposability. Then the killer is revealed to be a police officer who was extorting the street women using his badge and decided to kill some of them who threatened to expose him. Having finally obtained solid proof of the real killer Mickey goes out to find him by buying information about where he will be meeting up with a known drug dealer. So far so good.

At the meeting place Mickey finds the killer and the dealer, and orders them onto the ground at gunpoint. Ok, fine. Then she demands the killer explain himself and…then he does just that. Uh, what…? No lawyering up? No shootout with Mickey? He just admits what he’s been doing. Then, out of nowhere, the other street women (friends of the murder victims) show up and one of them shoots him.

The shooter immediately surrenders to Mickey, who then tells the shooter and her friends to just leave. Mickey wipes down the gun they used, and then uses it to shoot the (already dead) killer herself, because she doesn’t want to report the prostitutes for murder.

My wife started cursing out the TV and I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. The show spent 7.5 of its 8 episodes being painfully realistic, and then turned into a cartoony farce in just a few seconds.

How did the women know about the meeting? We aren’t told. Where did they get a gun? We aren’t told. If they already had a gun and they were willing to kill a cop in front of another cop, why didn’t they just do that before? We aren’t told. Mickey isn’t charged with any crimes for this because apparently a detective who wasn’t there vouched for her cover story. What was the cover story? We aren’t told. Why did the detective vouch for her? He thinks she’s too good of a cop to be fired over a little thing like covering up a murder.  

At that point the Kool-Aid Man could’ve burst through a wall saying “Oh yeah!” and it wouldn’t have surprised me. 

But by that point we’d already watched the entire series so we couldn’t retaliate by quitting. It felt like an outgoing president issuing a flurry of inappropriate pardons on his last day in office. What can you do about it? Not a damn thing. That’s the risk you take when you invest your time in a show. There’s always the possibility that it’ll flip you the bird at the last second.

This series was adapted from a novel, and from what I can gather the endings are pretty similar. This would’ve been a good time to make a change. But there is a positive outcome of this story for me personally. The next time I come across a show or movie that does this, I can just say they ‘Long Bright Rivered’ the ending.